£7bn 363 colleges 4.2m learners 263,257 staff

the consistent theme … that they can’t think of anything useful they’re good at. This contrasts starkly with young people who underpin their aspirations with personality traits that suggest they will be able to make a positive success of them. Something positive about them has stood out to the adults in their lives, and this gives them the confidence to make firm plans about their future

“I want to be a youth worker .. they told me I was really good at taking charge of groups and stuff and I’d be really good at it
[college student]

“wherever you’re gonna work, your not gonna like it … who wants to go to work – no-one”
[current NEET age 18]

Teachers aren’t about themselves, they are about other people.

Teaching isn’t about how the students feel about me, it is about how I can make them feel about themselves.

Learners in colleges don’t come into the sector as newbies – they have a lot of education experience behind them – and Ipsos Mori have already surveyed 2387 of them in 2008. 11-16 then, they are now 13-18, so their views will form the core of the 2009 college survey.

They were asked about the ways they prefer to learn, and what they do most often in class.

Teachers in Greece are going on strike thrice in the next month as Greece’s austerity programme begins [wage freeze for public sector workers for starters]

In almost-neighbouring Romania the austerity package includes sacking 15,000 teachers, and Gavin Hewitt [him off the telly] points out that there are four times as many teachers per student in Greece as in Finland, so ………

Finland and Sweden are the model for much current thinking on reshaping education after the 6 May election

And there is also a great deal of eyeing up of previously sacred cows.

Chart 2.1 shows that while there has been an increase in the percentage of 16-18 year olds in education or training since the EMA was launched, from 75.7 per cent in 2004 to 79.7 per cent in 2008, this is negligible … also a decrease in 16-18 year olds in employment, from 14.7 per cent to 10.0 per cent.

… NEETs increased from 9.6 to 10.3 per between 2004 and 2008.
These are poor results, and show that EMA is not a good use of money.

Abolishing EMA would save £530,000,000 a year.

Are the figures in Chart 2.1 valid?

and then

Is EMA a “front line service” or is it a back office function, and therefore saveable?

Any savings from scrapping EMA would be small beer when set against the £175bn deficit – but every little helps.

Taking a bolder line, could the [complicated and rigorous but existing] EMA system be harnessed as a participation-led college funding system. Young people cash in their course credit, and continue to get a cash back EMA in return for attendance and achievement ?

I have been looking at the decline in numbers of young people at national and regional level, and the first data which popped up when I googled for local authority numbers was for Gloucestershire.
When I take the pupil numbers, and roll them forward to 2019, Gloucestershire mirrors the steady decline seen at national and regional level.

My projection for Young People in Gloucestershire 2009 to 2019. Source data and graph also from File Box in side bar

By 2014, there will be 10% fewer 15 year olds to feed into further education colleges at 16, and the numbers keep going down to an 18% drop by 2018.
This is a challenge which is every bit as real as the coming funding challenge.

People feel powerless when they have little control over the direction of their own lives, or the power to shape the society in which they live – and we see this in how people talk about bankers or MPs expenses. We feel powerless when we compare our own position to bankers who appear to have the power to award themselves high pay, to burden us all with the huge cost of rescuing them when they fail, and to reward themselves while we bear the consequences of financial deficits – and we have no control or voice to shape events.

But the issue is not really about the power of the rich and lucky – it is really about boosting the powerfulness, the resourcefulness, of most people. All three parties now seem to “get it” and talk of “giving power away”, of empowering people, of devolving decision making to a local people.

And if education is to play its part in increasing power, then we need to have a good mental map of where the powerful and the powerless are, and what we need to do to increase the power of young people and adults.

Then, looking only at English Regions, the nearest useful figures are for the 15-19 age group.

Young People in English Regions to 2019. Source data in File Box in sidebar

Region

2009

2011

2013

2015

2017

2019

drop 2009-2019

East

357.6

352.2

348.3

341.2

331.9

332.4

7%

London

427.1

414.5

406.8

398.3

388.7

395.7

7%

South East

541.8

527.9

517.0

506.1

491.0

489.2

10%

South West

335.0

326.9

322.4

316.3

305.6

302.4

10%

England

3298.4

3195.0

3117.9

3038.7

2935.6

2928.7

11%

East Midlands

295.5

285.9

278.6

271.5

262.8

261.6

11%

West Midlands

358.2

344.5

336.4

328.1

315.7

314.3

12%

Yorks and Humber

352.2

341.0

330.8

320.3

307.6

305.9

13%

North West

461.9

440.0

422.3

408.1

391.0

387.6

16%

North East

169.0

162.1

155.2

148.8

141.3

139.6

17

Data: Office for National Statistics: 2006-based subnational population projections

Third: Over England as a whole, there will be 11% fewer 15-19s

Fourth: Even in London, there will be a steady drop in the number of young people, though at 7% it is less than the all-England figure of 11%.
Across the North, the drop is greater than 15%.

A glib, facile and superficial response to the figures would be that a major smart cut is now easy to imagine, and we can feed a projected 15% reduced spend in the FE budget into the savings which will help reduce the national financial deficit.